The Browns were in for some shockers when they finally met up with the Richards, a polygamous family in Springfield, Missouri, including the revelation that there are sisters wives who all sleep together in the same bed with their husband- ewww!

When Kody Brown and his four sister wives packed 13 of their kids into two RVs and traveled 1,400 miles to meet a “biblical” polygamist family, they wanted to know if they were “cool or backwoods weird.” Fortunately, when the Browns finally pull up to the Richard homestead, they prove to be surprisingly “normal”, though you do immediately wonder how dad Nathanael, wife #1, Rebecca, and wife #2, Christina, managed to pack 9 kids into what looks like a tiny mobile home.

‘Sister Wives': Browns Meet Richards — Richard Family Tells The Brown Family They Know Polygamists Who Share A Bed

Next, you are desperate to know how Nathanael managed to convince Rebecca, who he married 13 years ago, to agree to share her marriage with Christina.

It turns out that Nathanael pulled a “Tevye” from Fiddler on the Roof on her — he claimed that he saw Christina, who was destined to be his new wife, in a dream. Why he actually had a craving for a second wife remains unclear, although it seems to have involved a bit of a diss towards Rebecca, for totally being such a good wife.

Poor Rebecca was in the kitchen dutifully baking cookies for the family and Nathanael was wishing that she could be cuddling on the couch with him at the same time. That’s when his thoughts turned to having multiple wives. In other words, he wanted to have his cookies and eat them, too.

Essentially, Rebecca’s reward for cookie-baking was that her husband began pouring through the Bible and saw that polygamy was part of the “New Old Testament” (whatever that is).

“I thought that scripturally, [polygamy] was sound,” Nathanael revealed to the Browns, and then Rebecca explained that after her husband’s revelation about the acceptance of polygamy in the Bible, he began to joke repeatedly about finding a second wife.p

Kody wonders: why would any normal married man, who didn’t grow up as a Mormon or in a fundamentalist offshoot of the Mormon church, even begin to think about polygamy as an option? That’s an answer that we don’t ever get in the episode, except for Nathanael insisting that he and his wives were “called” to be polygamists, presumably by God.

“I was at a point of crisis,” Nathanael told the Browns. “I asked the Lord — ‘if there is anybody who is supposed to be my [second] wife, then show me in a dream.’ I went to sleep and shot up. I was like ‘whoa’ — I just had a vision from God and it showed me Christina as my wife and I knew her.” Christina attended the same church as the Richards and when Nathanael had his dream, Rebecca watched him sit up and immediately knew he had envisioned Christina. Definitely a sign from God, they believed.

Nevertheless, polygamy produced some agonizing moments for Rebecca, who “felt completely betrayed,” she recalls. “I felt like he wanted to cheat on me… I wondered, ‘what is it that I’m not doing that’s making you feel like you need this other person in your life?'”

Brown Family Shocked Over Missouri Polygamists Sharing A Wedding Bed

Rebecca’s confessions about her doubt, prompted Meri, Kody’s first wife, to also reveal that she’s STILL not over her “first wife feelings,” as Nathanael calls them, even though she now has three sister wives.

“I’m happy on the good days and when Kody shows love and affection, but on a bad day, I question my importance to the family and if Kody still cares about me,” she opens up.

Oh, poor Meri. It’s heartbreaking to hear that after all these years she’s still not totally down with being a polygamous wife. And neither Kody nor Nathanael seem particularly sensitive to ‘first wife’syndrome.

But whether or not you can stomach polygamy, you have to admit that both the Browns and the Richards raise sweet, grounded kids who have to deal with the repercussions of their parents’ polygamy.

Little Abigail Richard, about 10 years-old, is wise beyond her age. She confides to Kody’s sister wife #3, Christine Brown her confusion about why animals such as roosters can have more than one wife, but people can’t.

“People think polygamists are weird and different, but God made us all,” she explains. “Sometimes I don’t understand why people don’t like polygamists.”

She admits that sometimes other kids make fun of her and her siblings. “You can’t even tell them about polygamy,” she says.

Abigail’s so mature and earnest that your heart breaks for her and you’re glad that Christine can bond with her by also confessing that she had no friends as a child, because she had two mothers and had to keep her polygamist family a secret.

While the Richards turn out to NOT be weird, they do know polygamous families in Missouri who cross a line that the Browns and their church never go beyond.

They admit that they know polygamous families in which the wives not only share a kitchen, something the Brown sister wives found difficult, but they know families in which the wives share one bedroom with their husband! Yikes!

Kody explains that in their church, he was taught that “every woman owns her own bedroom and her own marriage bed and the rule is that your wives don’t ever share a marriage bed.” In other words, no threesomes.

It seems that some of these Missouri polygamists have crossed that kinky line, but the Richards are down with that.

“We have friends who share a room and we just want them to be free to be their family,” says the very tolerant Rebecca. “Everyone’s family is built different and whatever works for you… everyone can say, ‘I think you’re crazy,’ but whatever works for you.”

Well, tolerance is something that both the Richards and the shocked Browns can believe in and so can we. This Sister Wives episode is so interesting — I think the Browns should go on the road and meet more polygamist families.

What do you think, HollywoodLifers, would you like the Browns to introduce us to more polygamists? Let me know!